Civil and Environmental Engineering Internship Story: Kimley-Horn
Abrionna Jennings
Civil and Environmental Engineering
What company did you intern with and where are they located?
I worked for Kimley-Horn in Atlanta Midtown.
How did you identify and apply for your internship? Are there any specific resources you used to find the opportunity (i.e. Handshake, career fairs, other recruitment events)?
I made initial contact with Kimley-Horn when I attended the National Society of Black Engineers regional conference in 2022. I already had an opportunity for the summer of 2023, so I waited until summer of 2024 to complete an internship with KH. During the time between the initial contact and when I received my offer letter, I continued to check my email for any updates, and attended any virtual events they had.
What was the application process like?
I applied online through Kimley-Horn's platform.
Tell us about your internship experience. What types of tasks and projects did you engage in? Was there a particular project or part of the experience you learned the most from?
At Kimley-Horn, I was a production intern with the traffic operations teams. I analyzed data for traffic signals and intersections throughout the state of Georgia. Used softwares such as Google Earth to observe intersections and Synchro to build and model intersections with various data.
In what ways did this internship help you prepare for your next destination after Auburn?
It provided me an opportunity to build more professional relationships. Throughout the summer, I developed relationships with the other interns and met many people in various disciplines. As a production intern with the traffic operations team, this experience also provided a path into the transportation discipline within civil engineering. One of my goals after Auburn is to work towards obtaining my licensure as a professional engineer, either in the construction or transportation discipline.
In what ways did your coursework or other experiences at Auburn prepare you for your internships? Are there specific topics or skills you learned from classes that you put into practice on the job?
I recently took a transportation engineering class during my spring semester of junior year, and the content I learned provided strong foundational skills in transportation. For the tasks I completed working with traffic signals, I was able to apply the concepts I learned in the transportation engineering course, which made the tasks easier to understand. As an example, I learned about the phasing of intersections and later applied that knowledge to the workforce when I used programs to model real intersections.
Do you have any advice for other students looking for internships like yours?
Continue to build your resume with different projects, community service, and work experience. Participate and become involved in school organizations, especially ones related to your field of study. Attend school career fairs and regional/national conferences and expose yourself to the networking environment. Develop your elevator pitch and practice your interview skills. Familiarize yourself with LinkedIn and build your network. Last but certainly not least, be yourself!